Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Vice President Joe Biden suggested a new image to associate with Republicans who opposed Democratic efforts to toughen regulations on Wall Street, characterizing them as ” squealing pigs.”

I’m afraid of what will be lost is the complete lie that Crazy Uncle Joe would like the electorate to believe -

“…over the objections of Romney and all his allies, we passed some of the toughest Wall Street regulations in history, turning Wall Street back into the allocator of capital it always has been and no longer a casino. And they want to repeal it”

Here’s the facts, Joe. I know, why let them get in the way of a good sound bite…

“…the Obama administration's DOJ has not brought criminal charges against a single major Wall Street executive.” (Emphasis mine.)

For a little comparison from that evil George Bush and his “failed policy of the last administration” -

Between 2002 and 2008, for instance, GAI [Government Accountability Institute] points out how a Bush administration task force "obtained over 1,300 corporate fraud convictions, including those of over 130 corporate vice presidents and over 200 CEOs and corporate presidents."

Yes, just a bunch of “squealing pigs.”

Just like Obamacare not being a tax; how the Stimulus would create jobs; the Bush tax cuts being are “unfair” to the rich; being “laser focused on the economy”…should I go on, or would that be too much “squealing” Joe?

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

The protesters popping up at Mitt Romney's rallies throughout Michigan Tuesday look like run-of-the-mill grassroots liberals — they wave signs about "the 99 percent," they chant about the Republican's greed, and they describe themselves as a loosely organized coalition of "concerned citizens."

They're also getting paid, two of the protesters and an Obama campaign official told BuzzFeed.

At the candidate's afternoon stop outside a bakery in DeWitt, a group of about 15 protesters stood behind a police barricade, a few of them chanting in support of Obama. Asked why he was protesting, a man dressed in a grim reaper costume pointed a reporter to a pair of "designated representatives" standing in the shade.

"I can't talk, you gotta get one of those people over there to talk to y'all," he said. "They're the ones who can talk to reporters."

Neither of the representatives agreed to give their names, but two protesters said they were getting paid to stand outside of the rally, though their wage is unclear: one said she was getting $7.25 per hour, while another man said they were being paid $17 per hour.

Meanwhile, about 50 feet away, another protest had been organized by local Democrats in conjunction with the Obama campaign. A campaign official told BuzzFeed they had nothing to do with the other group — which he said he believed they had been sent by the labor-backed "Good Jobs Now" — and confirmed that they were being paid.

"I mean, it's a free country, they can go anywhere they want, but they're not with us," the official said.

The protesters also made an appearance at Romney's rally in Frankenmuth earlier in the day. There, a young man who identified himself only as Demarcus stood with a group of about five others, stopping reporters after the candidate's speech and saying they were there "to represent the 99 percent and tell Romney to stand up for us." He said he was from the group, "Good Jobs Now," but did not indicate whether he was being paid.

A protester being paid to protest by an organization called Good Jobs Now.

"This notion that somehow we caused the deficits is just wrong. It's just not true. Anybody who looks at the math will tell you it's not true. If they start trying to give you a bunch of facts and figures suggesting that it's true, what they're not telling you is they baked all this stuff into the cake with those tax cuts and a prescription drug plan that they didn't pay for and the wars," he said.

"So all of this stuff is baked in, with all the interest payments for it, it's like somebody goes to the restaurant, orders a big steak dinner, martini, all that stuff and then just as you're sitting down, they leave and accuse you of running up the tab. That's what they do," he said.

Remember? Just a few short years ago when actual adults (lots of them, not just a few, and famous and powerful ones, not fringe, kook, and unimportant ones) were–publicly–saying this kind of stuff, not just with a straight face, but with an earnest, impassioned face and eyes glistening with tears of urgent messianic fervor?:

“We have an amazing story to tell,” she said. “This president has brought us out of the dark and into the light.”

– Michelle Obama

“Obama is, of course, greater than Jesus.”

– Politiken (Danish newspaper)

“No one saw him coming, and Christians believe God comes at us from strange angles and places we don’t expect, like Jesus being born in a manger.”

–Lawrence Carter

“Many even see in Obama a messiah-like figure, a great soul, and some affectionately call him Mahatma Obama.”

– Dinesh Sharma

“We just like to say his name. We are considering taking it as a mantra.”

– Chicago] Sun-Times

“A Lightworker — An Attuned Being with Powerful Luminosity and High-Vibration Integrity who will actually help usher in a New Way of Being”

– Mark Morford

“What Barack Obama has accomplished is the single most extraordinary event that has occurred in the 232 years of the nation’s political history”

– Jesse Jackson, Jr.

“This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

– Barack Obama

“Does it not feel as if some special hand is guiding Obama on his journey, I mean, as he has said, the utter improbability of it all?”

– Daily Kos

“He communicates God-like energy…”

– Steve Davis (Charleston, SC)

“Not just an ordinary human being but indeed an Advanced Soul”

– Commentator @ Chicago Sun Times

“I’ll do whatever he says to do. I’ll collect paper cups off the ground to make his pathway clear.”

– Halle Berry

“A quantum leap in American consciousness”

– Deepak Chopra

“He is not operating on the same plane as ordinary politicians. . . . the agent of transformation in an age of revolution, as a figure uniquely qualified to open the door to the 21st century.”– Gary Hart

“Obama’s finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don’t even really inspire. They elevate. . . . He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh . . . Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves.”

– Ezra Klein

“Obama has the capacity to summon heroic forces from the spiritual depths of ordinary citizens and to unleash therefrom a symphonic chorus of unique creative acts whose common purpose is to tame the soul and alleviate the great challenges facing mankind.”

– Gerald Campbell

“We’re here to evolve to a higher plane . . . he is an evolved leader . . . [he] has an ear for eloquence and a Tongue dipped in the Unvarnished Truth.”

– Oprah Winfrey

“I would characterize the Senate race as being a race where Obama was, let’s say, blessed and highly favored. That’s not routine. There’s something else going on. I think that Obama, his election to the Senate, was divinely ordered. . . . I know that that was God’s plan.”

– Bill Rush

Pardon me while I take just a moment and say, in all seriousness to these people and all who took them seriously and parroted this twaddle: What on earth were you thinking?

What is revealing today is that many of those from the progressive side who are likely no longer enamored with the President think that he's not been progressive enough. They think he's sold out to the right.

It points to how wide the divide is, a wideness that does not portend well for the U.S. of A. in the near future.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

New state laws designed to fight voter fraud could reduce the number of Americans signing up to vote in this year's presidential election by hundreds of thousands, a potential problem for President Barack Obama's re-election bid.

Voting laws passed by Republican-led legislatures in a dozen states during the past year have sharply restricted voter-registration drives that typically target young, low-income, African-American and Hispanic voters - groups that have backed the Democratic president by wide margins.

A further 16 states are considering bills that would end voter registration on election days, impose a range of limits on groups that register voters and make it more difficult for people to sign up, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School.

The new laws - many of which include measures requiring voters to show a photo ID at the polls - could carve into Obama's potential support in Florida, Ohio and a few other politically divided states likely to be crucial in the November 6 election, analysts say.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA), which mandated a steep rise in domestic ethanol production, is causing unforeseen negative consequences for food prices while failing to live up to the desired gasoline results and other expectations, concludes a Texas A&M University research team headed by an economics professor who studies energy issues.

James M. Griffin, director of the Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics & Public Policy, which is part of Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service, and Mauricio Cifuentes Soto, a graduate student assisting him, say in their report that the goal of EISA was to cut greenhouse gas emissions and to ease dependency on imported oil. Policymakers also thought the new blend of ethanol and conventional gasoline would cost motorists less, they note.

“EISA mandated ethanol production to grow from 4.9 billion gallons in 2006, to 36 billion by 2022,” says Griffin, author of A Smart Energy Policy: An Economist’s Rx for Balancing Cheap, Clean, and Secure Energy. “Today, at 14 billion gallons, we’re not even halfway there and the unintended consequences of the policy, especially those influencing world food prices, are negative and far outweigh the positives.”

With the best of intentions, he observes, lawmakers believed the policy would have a positive effect by lowering prices at the pump. Moreover, since corn plants absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, greenhouse gas emissions would fall significantly, and the U.S. would build energy security as domestic ethanol replaced oil imports from the Middle East.

On the positive side, the researchers point out that after adjusting for ethanol BTU efficiency losses of 40 percent less compared to conventional gasoline, refining costs, taxes and subsidies, the net benefit of the ethanol policy is just about 2.2 cents per gallon or $24 per year for a typical household consuming 1100 gallons per year.

Additionally, using CO2 life-cycle estimates by the Argonne National Laboratory, the authors assert that, ethanol reduced U.S. and world greenhouse gas emission — 0.42 percent of U.S. and 0.08 percent of world emissions.

The Texas A&M researchers also traced an increase in corn and grain prices to ethanol production. They refer to the United Nations’ FAO Food Price Index which shows that between Jan. 2007 and Sept. 2011, after adjusting for inflation, corn prices increased by 68 percent, cereals by 69 percent and dairy products by 46 percent.

The researchers claim that not all these price increases are due to U.S. ethanol policies. However, even “if only one-fourth of this additional expenditure is attributable to ethanol, this would imply a loss to American consumers of $40 billion over the last 4 years.”

Even though these increased food prices might not look so significant, the world’s poor disproportionately share the burden of these policies because a large portion of their income is devoted to food alone, they add. According to the U.N., rising food prices plunged nearly 70 million people into extreme poverty in 2010-2011.

Friday, March 23, 2012

What is truly interesting about this piece, is that it is the Danish media doing it. I guess this guy may be their version of Jon Stewart, but he takes political journalism to an entirely new level with his examination of Barack Obama and his rhetoric.

The subtitles may be hard to follow, but the point being made isn't. Score one more for one of our strongest allies.